Primitive Dragon... man. Putting aside that Saber's suits unfortunately don't hit for me in general... while it did add some drama to why everyone still at Southern Base could have a reason not to trust Touma, my reaction to it was caught up in a wave of...

So, it's like when Emboar was Fire/Fighting, again. There's nothing wrong with Fire/Fighting, its actually a pretty cool typing, and Emboar in isolation is a cool pokemon! Nothing against Emboar itself! But getting it over and over again, back to back... at a certain point it became, aw geez, is this gonna happen every time now?

Which is where I ended up with the Kamen Rider berserk arc, now that it reoccurs so frequently. There's definitely cool storytelling potential in that arc, but is that arc right for every story? ...Well! Guess you'll see what you think of how it fits into this one.

...I do think the grabbing hand gimmick on the book itself is pretty fun though. if only they didn't leave the back of the hand hollow...

Oh and cute detail in this edition of Desast's walk with him mentioning all the secondary SoL trio's elements- wind, sound and earth.

Here, we get two debuts. The first is Keisuke Sohma, better known as Genta Umemori from Samurai Sentai Shinkenger (the guy Diend robbed of his robot squid). Here he does the voice of the Master and the guard who lures Touma to the forbidden book. That isn’t a coincidence or a budget saving measure. But needless to say, I will probably have a relevant actor joke meme down the line.

But our major debut this time is Primitive Dragon, which unusually, doesn’t get any of its three announcements played. And it was supposed to come out as a toy the week after this, but ended up being so delayed that the toy meant to trigger the sound being hacked in this video was out the next week.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=SKfFKvOAUiM

The great dragon from ancient times takes hold of the book’s power…

Grasp it! This new power!

I wanna get the force!

I have to say that though someone pointed out it was stock music, I did like the ost for the form’s debut fight. Sadly, this and the next one are the only two of Saber’s TV forms (not counting the Wonder Rider forms) I don’t own the books for, but that hasn’t stopped me from looking out for one.

And now, we close off with Primitive Dragon’s induction into the Berserker Form club.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...6/IMG_5782.JPG

Hmm, I recall a lot of people were calling it that when we were all trying to decipher them in the news and rumors thread. However, a quick web search of Ridermoji only turns up a little usage within the Western community, including content as recent as my post that you just quoted and excerpts from En-chan's crossover fic. I guess it could be one of those factoids, where somebody said it and everybody else followed. Thanks for putting me straight though.

Touma speaks so much truth here. I think this also shows how much Touma and Mei trust each other both professionally and as friends. Touma has the courage to show Mei all of his worst works (at least not NSFW stuff like he thinks Daishinji's writing) and Mei is great for how she approaches them with an open mind to try and make it in to a success for Touma, the publisher and the readers. People totally shouldn't underestimate the kind of bond these two have to make that work the way they do.

I have to disagree with you here about Metal Cluster Hopper. I thought its debut was seriously intimidating and memorable for how mercilessly it bested its opponents without moving a muscle and how it's not only a debut for a new form, but our first experience of the malicious Ark itself. One of the few moments of excitement and suspense in the otherwise dreadfully dull Job Competition arc.

I think the hollowness is symbolically appropriate. It's a book that's all rage and pain instead of intelligible prose, which is why Touma struggles as a writer to tame that power.

Furthermore, this is only the second actor to appear from Shinkenger. Karahashi Mitsuru, known by KR fans as Kaido, Musashi and Hayato, was also Shinkenger's coolest most bad*ss character, Juuzou.

Ever since watching the DX review for this, now I hear it as, "I want to get divorced.", which can be a joke headcanon for why Primitive Dragon is so mad. :lol

Oh Primitive Dragon! Possibly one of the best berserk forms in the entire franchise. And this is his first appearance. The very case when you see not a character, but a creature. I'll go so far as to say that this is my favorite arc (or internal mini-arc, considering exactly when it happens). Looking forward to your opinion on the development of the Bone Dragon story.
Regarding the fanfic: to be honest, I was surprised by its subject, given that the review is almost entirely devoted to the Primitive Dragon. But I liked this surprise. Hopefully Daishinji's fanfiction will surface in the future.

I really think it's... a myth. That is, we did not have berserk forms between OOO and Build, there was no berserk in Zi-O, and in the new era we got two in a row. I just can't call what happened in Revice a berserk arc, even if it's officially called that. So it seems to me that just about every other trope I've seen is used in these shows more often as berserk arc.

A fine way of justifying it within show, its just that the specific plastic molding pattern of supports that shows takes me out of it by feeling too artificial. And the cluster of holes is kinda freaky to look at :P but to each their own.

Absolutely agree. I love it when a big power-up comes with an associated downside. There's so much good drama to wring out of the need to use the new powers and the risk of losing control to them. My favorite, both aesthetically and in terms of plot relevance, is Blade's King Form, but any time that a major upgrade is more frightening to use than exciting, I'm a happy viewer.

I'll save my thoughts on the Primitive Dragon arc till the end, because I don't want to accidentally spoil anything, but I agree that it's a highlight of Saber for a lot of reasons. The suit itself also might be my favourite of Touma's? Icy Blue, obviously angry, very PuToTyra as has already been said, I'm not 100% on what would beat it.

Ren is a good guy, but yeah he's the one not clear-cut good and the morally grey one, he's anti-heroic. He performs the but has unheroic traits in how he's a bratty social darwinist who fights primarily to show off his power instead of protecting, and had no qualms creating infighting between the group for that like Touma.

It's true that it really displays Touma's heroism, but I'd say, the heroic part of Touma there is him being hellbent to help someone he doesn't really know in the Imoto sisters, and his vow to keep his promise. The determination part is something that only a means to the end, just like other assets that can be a help in doing good like power or intelligence. Villains can be the one who is determined too to reach their goals no matter what, like the extremely persistent ones who won't go down no matter what (similar to Touma dragging his ass to battlefield).

So it seems that Ren only appreciates power in certain people, like himself and perhaps Kento. Touma collecting power like this wouldn't like, make him side with the powerful Touma (well saying this as first time viewer), as he consistently had a bone to pick with Touma. There's more of the Primitive Dragon, but can't say that obviously. There's a different experience for the viewer to view empathetic hero becoming animalistic in rage, but, it's not Touma going off the deep end like Aruto before, it's the power doing its job by influencing the wielder - so perhaps there's nothing wrong with Touma as a person at this point, though obviously this can be something exploited by Reika to turn the swordsmen against each other, instead of how perhaps someone clear-headed will try to get Touma to explain more about Megid.

Being reckless to charge into action to help someone is a trait possessed by many of the main Riders to display how heroic they're. While it's true, gotta say that being reckless isn't a mandatory requirement to be heroic - nothing wrong to stop for a while to think twice. I think there's a difference between Touma and Kamijo that, it seems that due to how they're going on different path as Saber (albeit Kamijo became Calibur), Kamijo.... didn't actually collect power at least as Saber before? Like he was seen only using its base form. Similar to Riku (Yuusuke's predecessor) as Kuuga. It's not having power that corrupts him, but he didn't have power yet got tainted by his pursuit of power (which means, not having it yet). Touma seemingly had already gotten more powerful as Saber in his new forms, but so far he's still steadfast in saving people. Daishinji of all people should be the one who tries to inspect the gimmick.

Daishinji thinks going to Master Logos is a terrible idea while Touma and Yuri thinks it's great, but I'd think it's worth trying too, as it's unknown if this is a case of more reasonable superior compared to the prickly assistant, thus Master Logos, in the best case scenario, can be the one to convince Reika to stop her shit-stirring. Though Reika had noticed the trespassers when they acted on the plan. Storious seemingly has his own agenda and can put him at odds with Legeiel and Zooous, doesn't mean redemption though.

Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Saber Episode 23

I really really really like Primitive Dragon. From the second I saw the suit, it was the Saber design I've been most often tempted to say is my singular most favorite, even though it'd be foolish of me to limit myself to one choice like that. (I really can't even pick just between Touma's suits.) I was excited for this episode ahead of time as a result, and it didn't disappoint. Which I guess I don't need to go into much detail with, because it seems like a whole lot of other people like Primitive Dragon as well. Just as good for me, because I'm so excited about this stretch of the show I feel like if I try and go into it right now, I'll end up spoiling something or another for Die without realizing. I'll say this much for now: the design of the Primitive Dragon book is actually even more genius than I thought it was in that old post.

Outside of that one thing (that one very, very cool thing I'd love to talk about more), this is still a really fun episode, to a level where it's a bit of a bummer I can't help but reduce it to an "and also other things happened". It's the first episode since the initial two directed by Takayuki Shibasaki, the whole infiltration setup is neat, plenty of great character work with the Riders as usual... there's plenty to talk about here, it's just, man, it's so hard to compete with the impression that bone dragon Saber leaves.

The Ridermoji thing is definitely weird as I thought I heard it was officially confirmed somewhere but I guess I just adopted it accidentally?

Unsure! But it's definitely one of those things where a decent chunk of people use it.

First day of a storewide sale at work (so much packing and shipping and ringing people up!), so I've not only been out of pocket, but I'm burnt to a crisp. Let's see what we've got!

Ha ha, yeah. It's funny to me now, after watching a couple dozen series, that I barely clock the toyetic nature of this stuff. Like, there's a goofiness to the plastic toy book that Touma's interacting with, that's working him like a puppet, and I sort of don't think it distracts or detracts? It's just... I don't know, they live in a world of magic toys! I can't get too grumpy about it.

It's a great track! Agreed!

It's nice that, in the absence of Kento and Rintaro, the show has really re-emphasized the natural teamwork of Mei and Touma. They genuinely complement each other well, and Mei's capabilities give Touma such an underappreciated series of advantages. Hell, this whole break-in scheme was her idea! Which, y'know, didn't work out great for Touma, but still!

Thanks! I don't know how long it's going to be before Touma can have a friendly moment with Daishinji again, so I thought I'd pop that in there while I had a chance.

As for Daishinji's data-heavy and dryly-analytical report, "Brilliant Sound: A Tale of Swords and Swordsmen"... man, this is a family website! I can't post that!

My go-to is an probably always will be Build Hazard. I love how dire the plot gets because of that suit's introduction, and how easily a Berserk Form story escalates a series about technology and war. Also, this scene's from that story, and it's unbeatable:

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...isorasento.gif

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...sorasento2.gif

I really like Dragonic Knight, but I think Primitive Dragon keeps so much of the show's aesthetic while subverting it, that I gotta say Primitive Dragon is the best so far for that guy.

Daishinji's almost always going to be the voice of reason in any group, but even he can see that this team's going to need a bold swing or two if they're going to convince Rintaro, Ogami and Ren to join them.

Any sort of heist-y story usually has me paying attention, since it means (hopefully!) a more complex plot that provides a million pitfalls for our heroes. And this one doesn't disappoint in that regard, since Storious also decides to pull a B+E (book and entering) on the SoL. Just a super fun, clever plot that inevitably becomes a chaotic nightmare. Very happy with the choice and the result!

Did you sell anyone a cursed tome of knowledge that will turn them into a berserker warrior, or has that been pushed back to next month's release cycle?

Hey, it was going great, right up to the moment when it really wasn't!

Unfortunately, that was all we sold. In my defense, I hadn't seen this episode of Saber back when we were planning the sale. I was unaware of the inherent problems of Cursed Tomes Of Forbidden Knowledge, which, looking back now, seems sort of self-evident. Mea culpa!

Ah! I had the good sense to go and check, and the early magazine scans for the show explicitly used the term, which is where I figured it came from. So it's definitely at least kinda official! I just don't remember it being pushed at all after that, is sort of the part that confuses me. I'd imagine that might be because it doesn't make much sense on an in-universe level, given it's clearly just a general purpose old writing deal within the setting, rather than something specific to the Kamen Riders?

KAMEN RIDER SABER EPISODE 24 - “A FATHER’S BACK, AND THE FUTURE IT CARRIES”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/saber/saber24a.png

It’s the ending that I really locked into this time, which is a little rare for me?

I feel like the description of Primitive Dragon at the end by Master Logos is one of the first times in this show that I’ve gotten to the middle of a mystery and thought Holy Shit That’s Great. Just the idea that Primitive Dragon is at its most dangerous if you can’t empathize with it… so they gave it to Touma? I love that. I love the villains (?) being so smart about the heroic attributes of the protagonists that they can use those positive aspects in furtherance of their own diabolical plans. I just really love when shows can leverage that kind of character development to make the superhero plots more complicated and fascinating.

And it's so fun, to see the villains try to weaponize Touma’s empathy. Touma’s captured by Primitive Dragon, which is an interesting twist on a Berserk Form. This isn’t Touma leaning on a crutch, or addicted to power; Primitive Dragon is forcing itself into fights, and removing Touma’s agency. The book itself has an agenda, and a pathology. It’s a neat way of exploring depression, where the very people who might try and help you -- like Touma -- can also be damaged by an untreated illness. The Sword of Logos clearly doesn’t care if Touma is broken in the attempt to tame this eldritch insanity, so we get a compelling story of sorrow run amok.

That’s the biggest part of the episode for me, which otherwise was a mix of TWISTS and solid-if-unsurprising storytelling.

The TWISTS part first: Calibur’s back! From a dark portal! To stop Primitive Dragon from killing X-Swordman and maybe Mei! It’s probably Kento, but that’s almost irrelevant right now. It’s a mystery that’ll probably percolate for a little while (it was, like, a dozen episodes before we found out who Calibur was last time), and I’m sure I’ll have plenty of opportunities to react to it.

Also, we’ve got Reika semi-revealed as the smoky suspect who maybe swiped Calibur’s sword, probably kidnapped Sophia, and definitely snagged a bunch of Wonder Ride books while lying about Master Logos’s orders. I’m half-expecting this to all be chalked up to Reika doing shady shit for good reasons (mistrustful of Master Logos’s plans, safeguarding things from the traitor, low blood-sugar), but it’s still just Reika being Up To No Good with nothing in the way of legitimate obstacles to her continued unimpressive dominance, which is super good drama.

But! There’s solid, sweet character stuff in Ogami’s defection from the Sword of Logos, which became inevitable when Reika decided the best way to ensure dedicated-father Ogami stuck with the Sword of Logos was to tell him to stop caring about if his kid lives or dies. So! More top shelf management technique from Reika, and Ogami has one last duel with Touma to solidify their manly bond.

It’s a continuation of Ogami’s talk with Sora from a little while back, with Ogami needing to leave a broken home to better provide emotional support and a good example for his sword kids. It’s hard to serve as an ideal of chivalry and stability while knuckling under to the shadiest lady in the shadiest room, after all. Like, sometimes one family needs to be two families to keep from being no family, you know? Ogami’s making the hard choice today to make good choices from now on.

Which is all well and good, but I’m pretty much just thinking non-stop about that Primitive Dragon explanation. It’s so smart!

—

SUNSET SOON FORGOTTEN

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/saber/saber24b.png

Mei walked with Sora back to the bookstore, as his father and Touma limped behind them, congratulating each other on their fight.

Mei sighed a little. “Ugh, I wish they all didn’t have to fight so much,” she said to herself. “Every time they want to be proud of one another, they’ve got to try to hurt each other. I can’t take it anymore! It's too stressful!”

Sora tugged on her hand lightly, and she looked down at him. “It’s okay to be scared when they fight,” he said.

“What?”

“It’s okay to be scared.” He looked toward the sunset. “I used to get scared when my dad would fight a friend instead of a monster, because he’d always tell me not to fight my friends at school. I didn’t get it right away, how it was okay for him but not for me. But I got it. He’s not mad at Touma, he’s happy that they’re friends, but he wants to make sure Touma’s as happy to be friends as my dad is. They’re good friends, Mei. You don’t have to be scared.”

Mei smiled down at Sora’s scrunched up, serious face. “Okay, buddy. You’re right. I won’t be mad about them anymore.” She looked at that sunset, all orange and red. “I mean, hard to be mad when everyone’s friends and the sun’s going down so beautifully, right?”

“Yeah!” Sora raised his right arm in the air in excitement, as Mei held his left hand and swung it. “It’s so pretty!”

“Sure is. Lemme get that real quick.” She snapped a picture with her phone, and posted it to Instagram. They had a little time before they got back to the bookstore, so she figured she might as well cross-post it to Twitter. Huh. Come to think of it, she hadn’t logged into Twitter in a while. It wasn’t her main social media connection, but it might be good to see if she was getting any traction over there. She opened up the app, and checked a recent post. Not bad: ten retweets, fifty likes.

Wait… who was ‘@desasterpiece’? A click on the avatar and… no. NO. “Desast?!”

Sora looked up at Mei, worried. “Desast,” he asked, “where?”

“On Twitter!”

“Oh,” Sora said with relief, “I thought you saw him just now. If he’s just on your phone, it’s okay.”

“No,” Mei said through gritted teeth, “it’s NOT okay. It’s TERRIBLE. He has twice as many followers as I do!”

TO BE CONTINUED!

Again, I really love what they do with Primitive Dragon. It's why I did the comparison to Putotyra, because they're similar... but very different at the same time. And it's probably why Primitive nearly edges out Putotyra as my favorite of the two berserkers.

If you're liking stuff now, I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I feel like you're like in for a treat the further we go along.

And like... I just love how it forces its way into fights. Like yeah you could tell Touma to not fight but he's not gonna just not fight, you know? So he charges in and then suddenly, boop! Primitive Dragon just came in for the save! I also feel a bit of catharsis in which Primitive decides to make usage of the head decoration of Saber for actual functional combat use.

That being said, I do love Touma and Ogami's fight, in which Ogami's like "Just go all out with me, that's the only way you're going to prove to me you've got what it takes" and so we get a very different duel between the two. And of course I do like that we're getting a legitimate reason for why the Riders likely won't be using other forms anytime soon. While it isn't as hectic as say OOO, I do love it when collectibles change hands and gives reasons for why characters don't or do use certain items.

Meanwhile with the story, I love how profound Sora is for a kid, and really... it fits super well. Also nice to see Mei being more active on social medi-ohoho I see a certain Megid managed to sneak his way on there!

That certainly was a cliffhanger I wasn't expecting... so there's only one way to follow this up!

===Zero Presents: Desast Walk===

Desast Walk #6:

"Hello, humans.

I'm Dessert.

You humans are still playing with these things, aren't you?

It's called "Manga"?

...... Well...

It's not a bad way to pass the time."

I laughed out loud when Primitive Dragon used the headsword! It's like, if you have a sword on your head, why aren't you doing a ton of headbutts? Primitive Dragon is the only one thinking tactically about these fights, I guess...

Reika has many excellent skills. Subtlety is not one of them. Thankfully for her, very few characters on this show are good at reading people.

It's not even the lack of subtlety, it's her staggering inability to understand how to keep people from defecting. Like, Ogami has very few recognizable traits in this show, but his MAIN ONE is being The Dad. (His other traits are Dated Popped Collars On Polos and Still Being The Dad.) So for her to look at his wavering commitment and decide that this is the best point to put forward an ultimatum where he has to choose between his only beloved son and a dimly-lit coven of sword cultists who are an anxiety attack away from being a Workplace Incident... like, she could not have miscalculated worse than if she told Ren he wasn't allowed to be powerful anymore. It's mind-bendingly bad management!

Time for some Desast's Walk margin notes. Fun fact! The manga Desast is reading here is Skull Man, a predecessor to Kamen Rider by Ishinomori. According to comments by Desast's designer Skull Man was used as a partial motif in designing him! Plus, one of Desast's three chimera stories is "The Singing Bone", so it fits from that angle too.

...Seeing Desast get to enjoy his time in such a normal and chill way is one of the things I really appreciate about Desast's Walk as a project... aw : )

I like the implication the SOL is so devoted to its own infighting that none of them bar Mei have noticed Dezast becoming a niche Twitter influencer. What a guy.

Question to Die. (Long time no see :rock:)
Which lore or lores from the wonder ride books so far intrigues you?

Truly a tactical genius ahead of our time.

Congrats on your 2300th post!

Thanks to Fish digging up those magazine pics, looks like it was officially confirmed after all, just never used in the show. So yeah, we may as well keep using it.

Mei's a lot smarter than people give her credit for, so it was nice for Touma to acknowledge her as a good editor. Mei was so disappointed when Yuri literally dragged her away from her own plan to infiltrate Southern Base.

I mean, Primitive Dragon can't really kill X-Sword-Man. Incapacitate, probably, but the man beneath the suit is only a hardlight projection made by his sword. As long as Kougouken Saikou exists, Yuri lives.

Time to play Who's Calibur? Part 2. There are two main suspects here. First is Kento, who was last seen being absorbed by Kurayami's curse upon his death. Second is returning suspect Tassel, who was surprisingly absent from his house at the end of this episode and must have been in a hurry as he neglected not only to do his usual outro but also to close his door.

I like how Ogami shows his character development here. In his introduction, he stubbornly insisted that he knew best and made light of Touma's love of books, but now he's actively confronting his choices and seeking wisdom from his son Sora, which is an impressive quality for any father. He wanted to encourage Rintarou and Ren to think for themselves, like Touma and Daishinji did, but they needed an example to follow and Ogami sticking around was only holding them back. I think he was right to give them that space to decide on their own, even if it meant he had to hurt their feelings by formally declaring his defection from SOL to Team Saber. Rintarou's reaction was expected, politely respecting Ogami's choice while deep down he was heartbroken. Even Ren's resolve faltered a little there.

To Be Continued?! Damn, is Mei going to challenge Desast for popularity?!

Actually, that makes a lot of sense when you phrase it that way. Reika is absolutely someone whose answer to that choice would be the sword cult.

It's adorable. My absolute weakness in Kamen Rider is when monsters get to do non-monster stuff. One of my all-time favorite characters in tokusatsu is a cubist monstrosity who preferred to make art instead of helping to destroy the world. Desast's bored meandering is very much to my tastes!

The second part of this story is just the dumbest thing, and I had to write it immediately. Sorry in advance!

Nice to hear from you again!

Wonder Ride Books... I mean, is it too obvious to say Primitive Dragon? There're really only a few books that the show has bothered to imbue with something other than a cursory backstory, and they're basically all Touma's power-ups: Dragonic Knight, Primitive Dragon, King of Arthur. I think those are the only ones that got actual stories devoted to them? Even Rintaro's power-up was just a last-minute save that didn't really get a bunch of background. (Oh! I guess X-Swordman got a little runner through a few episodes, as well.) Primitive Dragon's danger and mystery makes the most compelling power so far, at least to me.

I'd love to hear anyone else's answer to this question!

I just can't take Tassel Is Calibur seriously as a theory, I'm sorry. I'm not saying it can't be him, but it would make Calibur irrevocably weird, and sort of worthless as a villain/anti-hero/threat. It would be funny, but it's also mostly an HBV punchline reveal. Maybe! But, boy, you gotta make some huge changes to Tassel -- now and forever -- in order to keep Calibur as a boogeyman for our group of workplace swordsmen.

Reika is very much the Dwight (or Gareth) from The Office character-type of this workplace dramedy: she's a fanatically devoted employee who fancies herself a vital cog in the machine that's destined for greater responsibility, but that same fanaticism makes her ill-suited for anything other than following orders. She can't manage others because a) she lacks basic people-skills, and b) she can't conceive of a goal or motivation beyond Eternal Service. She's an incredibly bad pick for getting the Northern Base soldiers to toe the line!

Yes, the Primitive Dragon is as adorable as it is intimidating. By the way, I have not yet seen his comparison with depression, very successful and makes me think. And it's great that Ogami joined the Saber team at such a difficult time. As for the rest, I'll probably unsubscribe after later episodes.
The story is very nice. But by the way, I harassed the Desast tweet as soon as Twitter was mentioned.

Don't underestimate the creepiness of Tassel. Just imagine if at midnight, in a house without light, the doors of your closet will open and from there you will hear: "Bonna Lecture!"

Thanks! And I don't blame you for harassing Desast!

I don't want to sound like Tassel's comedic nature precludes him from being a menacing villain -- there's a great Ex-Aid arc where musical mascot Poppy PiPoPaPo becomes a cheerful executioner for the bad guys -- but Calibur's got too much dramatic weight on him to be anyone other than Kento right now. Like, the story becomes so much worse if it's not Touma's haunted best friend under that mask.

Also, as always with this show: not sure why this needs to be a mystery? Feels like you could just go This Guy's Calibur, and then spend all your storytelling energy on the characters reacting to it, rather than being all speculative about it for weeks.

I think you answered your own question: it would focus the storytelling. Gaving Calibur show up is shocking but with a lack of context it?s something that can simultaneously be a twist and sink to the background to let Primitive Dragon etc take the focus. Saying who Calibur is right away is the kind of hit-the-brakes-on-everything-else kinda thing, you know?

I suppose. I'm just worried I'm in for another batch of episodes where Calibur is a weirdly-unfocused threat, and then an eventual reveal that recontextualizes his previous appearances instead of, y'know, making those appearances fun and/or compelling in the moment.

(This is part of a larger issue I have with how Saber is sort of like Wizard, in its tendency to spend weeks doing weird, counter-intuitive things, to then spend a scene retroactively making those things sensible and clever. It's nice, at the end, but it somehow values the destination over the journey? Wizard's a mega-arc that I adore -- one of the smartest third act twists of any series, ever -- but I found the first viewing of about three-quarters of the series to be immensely dull and repetitive. I don't know if saving all your powder for a fun endgame twist is worth the many episodes that have to be less-fulfilling because of it?)

That is an interesting take, especially the comparison to Wizard. May be one of the reasons I love Saber; it evokes the same feeling in a way ^^

I love stories that are twisty and recontextualize themselves. One of my favorite things about Saber, like I said before, is how it drops things; weeks later, it suddenly fits into the bigger picture and recontextualizes everything. It feels rewarding to me, like the show acknowledges the people trying to dig into it.

There is nothing worse than a show simply revealing itself to be not that deep when digging into, while simultaneously seeming to expect people to theorize. And Saber always pleasantly surprised me with how connected and solid its worldbuilding is.

For me, it's like a game. Can I guess the plot, the characters, and the twists before they are revealed?

No? Impressive, you did well in crafting something surprising!

Yes? Sweet, I was right! You laid it out very well for me to catch!

And Saber made me feel very rewarded across its run ^^

That said, let's talk about bony boy xD

Primitive is such a fun form. It is such a unique threat placed at the exact right moment! It delivers on every front in being a bone in the spanners and really creates some fun emotional character moments!

Love it!

And that's a totally valid way to approach these types of shows! A lot of folks love to spend months sifting for clues, or seeing if their theories pan out. For me, someone who generally doesn't find a ton of entertainment in speculating about hidden motivations or whatnot, I end up being left with a show that's only its best self on a rewatch, instead of a fun and rewarding initial watch.

Very fair. I just tend to trade the speculation for appreciation on the rewatch. That may just be because I grew up with One Piece though xD

Not that I don't care about the here and now. One of the reasons I appreciate Geats so much, I love the domino of mysteries still being set up, but love even more the very fun one offs.

That said, you may not be the biggest fan of my writing then since I love structuring stories around twists that change the perspective on previous events ^^

Yeah, I think it's tricky (but very rewarding!) to find that balance of a status quo that's intriguing without being frustrating; a cast that's relatable without being shallow; and a series of twists that aren't the only source of tension in a plot. It's tough! Geats does it really well!

Like, my favorite twists aren't ones that make previously-boring stuff interesting, because you need a certain amount of boredom and/or frustration in order to create a payoff, but twists that add additional layers of meaning to previous exciting scenes and stories. Whether Saber (or Wizard) was doing that is really up to the individual viewer.

The suit actor being Espada’s sold me on Calibur being Kento

That's an interesting -- and semi-spoiler-y -- detail. Thanks?

You’re welcome, I guess

Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Saber Episode 24

So yeah, already Die is starting to see the bigger picture with this storyline. The real secret sauce of this whole genre of berserk forms we have now, to me, is that pretty much every show has a really distinct take on it that tends to tie itself deeply to the overarching themes of that particular Rider series. There's the fundamental hook of seeing the hero lose control, and that always creates tension, but I find the deeper drama tends to be elsewhere with these things. In Saber's case, I mean, again, this is a show by the people who made Ghost, so it probably goes without saying I was particularly interested in how it would approach the idea. Heck, I basically already knew exactly where things were going by this point, and that only made me even more excited.

Oh, and speaking of Primitive Dragon's lore, it's worth noting the "tale of sorrow" that Touma finds in this one is actually a fully-written short story, by the way! It even went up with the production notes that week on the website, which naturally meant I was eagerly staring at that Saber text for way longer than was necessary, considering they had the mercy to just provide it again in regular Japanese the next week. But that wasn't the point, man! The point is that, as a Saber fan, I was given the chance to put in that extra effort of digging into the show, and, as ever, was rewarded for it with a better understanding of just how awesome this show is. If they went through the trouble of writing the whole thing, the least I can do is read it, you know?